The Star Walker
by Starrik
Summary: The Doctor, after his first departure from the Ponds, meets a new face. Or is it a very, very old face? Only time will tell where this adventure will take him.


The Star Walker

A headline like that, how could the Doctor ever hope to resist. It was plastered all over the local newspaper, an odd young man, wandering across fields and through woods in the dark of night, with armfuls of star charts and measuring devices. Who was he? What was he doing? Why the Star Walker? A yellowed, decaying copy of the paper sat on the TARDIS console, staring the Doctor in the face. His fist rested on his chin, his ancient eyes analysing the paper carefully, judging, and weighing up the options. The only sounds were the whirring of idle machinery, the backdrop to his thoughts. Anyone who had known the Doctor for any longer than five minutes knew the end result. If there was something the Doctor could never resist, it was curiosity.

An invisible switch flicked within him, sending the Doctor leaping and spinning around the impossible room, throwing levers and pressing the buttons, some incomprehensible order to his chaos. The whole machine shuddered to life, a grating, groaning noise signalling the TARDIS' departure from deep space, and into rural England. A smile broke his lonely face, the excitement that hid behind those deceptive blue doors was always enough to make him grin.

He burst from the police box, crashing headlong into a monstrous human-paper combination. Maybe he had been slightly too accurate. His eyes quickly adjusting to the low light levels, he focussed on the slowly separating masses of human and reels of paper.

The eyes were the first things he noticed. Old eyes. Ancient eyes. Eyes like his. What was a pair of old eyes doing on a face younger than his, in the middle of the British Isles? His mouth finally catching up with his rapid thoughts, the Doctor clapped his hands together and spoke, as quick as ever, "Hello! Sorry, didn't see you there, beneath the paper, and books and….stuff." he trailed off slowly, drinking in the young man with the old eyes in front of him. The boy- could he say boy? He didn't know- was wearing an unassuming dark jacket and jeans, with a red shirt poking out from underneath the jacket. No matter how hard he tried, the Doctor was always drawn back to the eyes.

"Doctor…" the murmur barely seemed to come from the other's lips at all. He shook his head, then finally responded to the Doctor's remark. "Sorry, I didn't see your….blue box? In the middle of a field. Why?" Ah. He noticed the box. Well, he had almost walked into it, and he had walked into the Doctor.

"What's a young man like yourself doing in the middle of a field at this time of night with half of a library?" the Doctor straightened his bowtie, and took a step back.

"I asked first."

"Alright. I landed here, didn't mean to get quite so close to you but these things happen. The old girl isn't completely reliable." He leant backwards, misjudging the distance between him and the TARDIS, very nearly falling flat on his back. At a chuckle from the other, he straightened his jacket, and leant on the TARDIS proper. "There, I answered you question, now what about mine, Star Walker?"

The other raised an eyebrow at the invocation of the nickname he had been appointed. "I'm looking for something."

"What are you looking for? I'm very good at finding things. In fact, I might be the best at finding things!" From most mouths, that would have sounded truly arrogant, but from the Doctor it seemed something of pure fact, to be accepted or denied at your own will.

"I'm looking….for a signal I think. It gets very foggy… a symbol, a message. And a ride."

"I'm even better at the going places thing. Where do you want to go?" In the Doctor's head, the start of that sentence still rang, _All of time and space, where do you want to start?_

The response made the Doctor fall off of the TARDIS for real, and land hard on the ground.

"There." The boy-who-had-old-eyes pointed almost straight up, directly a star indistinguishable from all the others.


End file.
